


Codes

by lalejandra



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hackers, Gen, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2019-07-14 19:42:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16047236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: no_tags winter 2014. Prompt #4 Mikey/Pete/Alicia, cyberpunk data thieves





	Codes

**xarmax** hes back.

Pete stares at the blinking cursor. He doesn't know what else to say, so he hits enter and waits for Alicia's response. 

**lice** how do you know

 **xarmax** noone codes like him. 

"Codes," of course, being a code itself, because you never know when the NSA is listening. Ha ha.

(That's a joke, because the NSA could never hack Alicia's system. They don't even know her system exists, she flies so low below the radar. Not like Pete.)

 **lice** where did u see him code

 **xarmax** that thing w the bank in the thing the other day in the place. i swear to god that was him.

 **lice** not that i dont believe you  
**lice** but i dont believe you

 **xarmax** check for urself.

Pete types /afk, and goes around the corner to get another venti iced vanilla latte. By the time he gets back, Alicia will have checked and seen that two nights ago, someone hacked a bank in Idaho. They hacked a bank and had an ATM spit out $700 into the street.

Pete and Mikey watched that movie a hundred times together over chat. And once together in meatspace. Just once. But that once, Mikey had said, "Dude, if I ever disappear, when I come back, you'll know it's me because I'll do that. The lamest fucking hack of all time," and he'd laughed that stupid honking laugh that Pete had _never_ pictured coming out of one half of the Chemical Romance.

("Shut up, that was a totally righteous hack," Pete had said, and Mikey had honk-laughed again, and they'd chorused, "But not like hacking a Gibson.")

(Even liking that movie is a joke for people who do the kind of things they do. But Pete's never fit in anyway, and Mikey didn't care about fitting in, and Alicia... well, badass hacker chicks fit in everywhere.)

When he comes back, Alicia's still there.

 **lice** shit  
**lice** he always loved that movie  
**lice** what a fucking weirdo  
**lice** but he definitely isn't in idaho  
**lice** that's too easy  
**lice** he's not with his mother or brother  
**lice** if his brother even really exists  
**lice** i mean come on  
**lice** the best cover is someone to take the fall  
**lice** fuck, you really went afk  
**lice** come back  
**lice** come back  
**lice** come back  
**lice** come back  
**lice** come back  
**lice** god  
**lice** i'm going to get diet coke brb  
**lice** asshole

Pete sits down at the keyboard.

 **xarmax** his brother was real

This is an old argument between them. Alicia's cycles had always meshed with Mikey's -- she never met the other one. When Pete and Mikey had met in meatspace, Mikey had referred to him just as "G," and Pete had gone along with it, never asking for more information. But he knew Mikey and G had never advertised that they really were two different people, that Chemical Romance wasn't a handle for just one person.

Pete sometimes logged on and saw Chemical Romance doing shit that wasn't Mikey's style, though. Giving speeches about Batman on bulletin boards and he'd say things... well, like, they were fucked up just like Mikey was fucked up, but they were fucked up in a different _way_ than how Mikey was fucked up.

And Mikey _did_ have a brother. So. Not even criminal masterminds could have _that_ many layers. Play _that_ deep a game.

Plus, Pete is almost positive he's seen G hanging around. Different places, a different handle, same Batman opinions.

 **xarmax** doesnt matter anyway.  
**xarmax** well find him no matter what right?

 **lice** duh  
**lice** but it'll be harder if he's hanging with a new crowd

 **xarmax** u can do it, ur the best there is

She's so good, actually, that she would never have even talked to Pete if she and Mikey hadn't been... something. Pete doesn't know what. She's so fucking closed-mouthed -- he doesn't even know if she ever met him in meatspace. He's dropped hints that _he_ had, that he knew what Mikey looked like, that they'd talked on the phone (once, but it _counted_ ). That when Mikey had pulled that job with HeyChris and then disappeared, Pete had been fucking _gutted_ \-- to team up with one of Pete's sworn enemies and then leave without a word?

But then Alicia had reached out to him. Through, like, six different intermediaries. She was so hardcore.

 **lice** flattery will get you  
**lice** everywhere except into my pants :)

 **xarmax** i luv u. im gonna start with running searches on shit he used to say to me.

 **lice** is your system clean  
**lice** you could track people right to him

 **xarmax** fuck u

 **lice** Sorry. Anxious.

She always used caps and punctuation when she was serious (or on a job, as he found out the one time they pulled a job together), so he let it go.

 **xarmax** same. reconvene in a few hours?

 **lice** yeah  
**lice** i'll put out word that he can go to you  
**lice** your meatspace is still safe right

 **xarmax** yeah but im not where i used to be. what if he cn't find me?

 **lice** he'll find you if he's ready to come back in

 **xarmax** i know we dont talk about this but what if hes compromised????????

 **lice** never  
**lice** fuck you for even thinking that

 **xarmax** it would explain shit. all the shit. if he got pulled in.

 **lice** doesn't matter  
**lice** mikey would never flip  
**lice has logged off**

Shit. She never actually used Mikey's name. Like, she could have not even known it until Pete had said it once. 

(Except Pete didn't think so.)

Now Pete feels like even more of an asshole than usual.

To make it up, he stops running the background processes his system is working on -- he's been toying with the idea of hacking into the CIA lately, and only partially because the Bourne movies have been running in a loop on TNT and he's a sucker for shitty basic cable -- and devotes his full processing power to running searches. He used to run these searches all the fucking time, phrases from Mikey's emails and chat logs that he used a lot, trying to find someone whose words parsed like Mikey's. He'd never gotten anywhere before; he'd stopped doing it after almost a year. Dialing into that many BBS locations used a lot of his processing power, and it was so fucking fruitless and awful, especially to see PHRASE NOT FOUND blinking over and over again.

But that had been over a year ago. This time would be different. It had to be. Pete and Alicia would find Mikey and then they'd be an unstoppable criminal force. Look out, NSA.

  



End file.
